Originally Posted by
ccmdfd
After many years of contemplating, I finally took the plunge and purchased some reloading equipment. I have a lot of potential projects, but right now want to concentrate on one.
The goal: Develop a load for my 7mm-08 with a Barnes TTSX that is effective for deer sized game 300 yrds and in.
Why? I've been shooting Barnes factory TTSX's for quite some time and have been impressed with the terminal performance on deer. However, I've never been impressed with the factory loaded ammo's accuracy. I'd like both. I'd be satisfied with <1 moa, and absolutely tickled pink with 0.5. Don't need anything better than that.
So I've purchased several reloading manuals, and watched dozens of hours of YT vids about reloading and felt like i could take a shot at it.
Got some brand new Nosler brass (all that was available), Federal Match LR primers (again all that I could find), TTSX bullets and Varget. Why Varget?-well 1. available, 2 I see it in many other calibers reloading data so I don't need to purchase a ton of different powders now, 3. Temp stability. It can be 90F on opening day and 20F on last day.
Read the Barnes manual, placed the bullets 0.05 off of "jam" as determined by the Hornady tool, and made up some ammo for charge weight testing. Started at min, loaded 5, then increased by 0.5 grain all the way to max (well the last was only a 0.4 change per their recommended max load), 5 rounds at each load weight.
Shot a group at 100 yards for each loading (10 total loadings of 5 each) with 10 min of cool down between loadings. Used LabRadar for chrono.
Why 100 yrds? I'm not an expert shooter. At 200 or more yards my inaccuracies would blow out any differences in the actual ammo.
What I observed:
1. I never found a plateau in velocities. There was a nearly perfect 30 fps increase for each 0.5 additional powder. Smallest delta for fps was 28, largest 44, most were mid-30's. (or do i have the wrong perspective? is a 28 an actual plateau??). FPS's ranged from 2666 to 2964.
2. Only the max load and max-.4 loads gave velocities similar to factory Barnes ammo out of the same gun.
3. I know i'm a newb, but i've looked at every video and webpage i can and i didn't see anything like a classic pressure sign even at max load.
4. Groups got smaller, then larger, then smaller, then larger. But my inaccuracies again come into play. I had 3 loadings in a row with what started as sub 1inch groups, but then 1 pulled shot taking it to a 1.5 inch group.
So big question: where to go from here??
As I see it I could:
1. Work with what I have. Go back to those smaller group sized loads and load some more and maybe even do some smaller variances between loads, say 0.3 grain and verify that there is indeed a node in that area. However-that general area is running 120 FPS slower than factory loads. Would that make a difference in terminal performance of the bullet?
2. Keep pushing up on the powder load until i get pressure signs, or find a definite node, or max out the case.
3. Since i didn't see any pressure signs at max load, just choose that even though it wasn't the smallest group so i can retain the FPS needed for performance, and then see if changing bullet seating would get the accuracy better.
4. Wide open to any other suggestions.
Any good reloading forums? Hate to join more and more internet stuff but if there's one which is considered the cream of the crop, then I 'd potentially join and ask there.
Thanks
cc